Before he left for vacation, Gov. Chris Christie attended to a bit of housekeeping.
Tidying up scattered statutes, reinforcing the seams of others, and securing loose ends, the governor signed a package of bills to streamline and toughen New Jersey’s already rigorous gun laws.

The least controversial of the measures introduced in the Legislature — largely in response to the massacre of 20 children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut — the new laws call for submission of mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and barring those on the federal terrorist watch list from owning guns.

They upgrade unlawful possession of a firearm to a first-degree crime and increase the mandatory minimum sentence by six months.

From now on, firearms trafficking will be subject to the No Early Release Act, which requires offenders to serve at least 85 percent of their terms. And straw purchasers of guns are facing tougher penalties.

We’re encouraged that the governor has signed what he termed “common sense” measures.

Five other bills, however, await action on the governor’s desk. All qualify as further matters of common sense.

One bill would overhaul how the state issues firearm permits and require buyers to show they have completed a safety-training course.

Another would require law-enforcement agencies to report to federal databases information on guns that are illegal, used in crimes, lost, stolen or discarded.

The governor also has an opportunity to make New Jersey the second state to ban .50-caliber rifles, the most powerful weapon available to civilians.

With its 4-inch armor-piercing bullets, the 5-foot-long sniper rifle is not built, as the euphemism goes, for anti-personnel applications but for destroying far-distance targets.
Joseph King, a terrorism expert at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said in an interview with the Associated Press that terrorists could use the weapon to take out a plane.

“I don’t understand any civilian use of it,” he said. “The only thing it’s good for is for military or police application. You can’t really hunt with it because it would destroy most of the meat.”

The leader of the New Jersey Association of Rifle and Pistol Clubs opposes the ban on the “$10,000 rifles used by wealthy hobbyists.”

The selfish interests of a few “hobbyists” should not stand in the way of protecting the greater good and safety of all New Jerseyans.

But the ban on the .50-caliber Barrett rifle is one that he recommended.